Twitter’s Origin Story Will Soon Be a TV Series

Photo: Ariel Zambelich/WIRED

Twitter doesn’t reach nearly as many people as Facebook. And it has yet to turn a profit. But like the Facebook origin tale, the story behind the rise of Twitter’s microblogging network is a barn-burner. And Hollywood wants a piece of the action.

On Wednesday, film and TV house Lionsgate announced that Nick Bilton’s bestselling book on the creation of Twitter will become a TV series, in one form or another.Hatching Twitter author Nick Bilton. Photo: Christopher.Michel/Flickr

Bilton, a New York Times columnist, will write the teleplay and serve as producer. Allison Shearmur, one of four executive producers behind the hit movie Hunger Games, will act as executive producer.

There was considerable appetite for the project. According to a source close to the bidding, who wished to remain anonymous because he or she was not authorized to speak with the press, there were multiple offers to adapt the book, with Paramount emerging from the pack as a close second to Lionsgate.

“I can’t think of a more compelling story to adapt for television right now,” said Lionsgate Television Group Chairman Kevin Beggs in a press release. “Twitter has transformed almost every aspect of our lives from politics to business to friendship.”

Released in early November 5, Bilton’s Hatching Twitter has already made a big splash, debuting at number 14 on the New York Times E-Book Nonfiction bestseller list and at number 5 on the Wall Street Journal Hardcover Business list. An excerpt published in October in the New York Times Magazine detailed fights between early Twitter staff for credit and control of the service.

Though Lionsgate is clearly putting its weight behind the series, it remains to be seen who will air it and what the production process will look like. It’s possible Lionsgate will create a pilot and end up placing the series at a broadcast or cable network like AMC, which carried Lionsgate’s Mad Men. It’s also possible Lionsgate could go a less conventional route, selling a package of episodes without ever making a pilot, as it did with the series Orange Is the New Black, which streams over Netflix. Hypothetically, it could also sell the project as a miniseries as it did with Houdini, a four-episode biopic ordered by the cable network History.